Sunday, February 27, 2011

No one in film has so dissected and anatomized diabolical corpi with more dedication and precision than Al Pacino.

Not even the combined forces of Martin Scorcese and the chilling characters he created with Robert DeNiro can come up with the living, breathing reality of what Pacino only began to discover with his Michael Corleone of The Godfather.

The great excitement in the film [Insomnia] is that [Pacino] is paired with another, specifically comic genius, Robin Williams, who is equally given to a Shakespearean range of theater games.*

Both of these volcanoes play the most divinely impressive game of who can out-underplay the other. With explosive possibilities rumbling within the Pacino/Williams Showdown, what we’re invited to watch are two extraordinary artists laying out the mysteries of two seemingly normal but tragically flawed men.

NOW THAT IS JUST BEYOND THE PALE. ROBIN WILLIAMS IS JUST NOT ON THE SAME PLANE AS ANYBODY GOOD AND MORIARTY HAS FINALLY LOST HIS—

I danced to such slaughter until I met Janet Reno in the backroom of a Washington D.C. hotel. The sulfur rising from our chicken dinners was prophetically tyrannical. It was a preview of the enlightened despotism to be found in the Progressively Marxist New World Order of the Obama Nation. Such sulfur literally pores out of Joe Bidon’s pro-abortion Catholicism as his high-speed train pummels us more firmly into debt.

My friends at Hilobrow are running a really fun series of posts about comic book legend Jack Kirby. It's called Kirb Your Enthusiasm, and each essay is by a different person analyzing a panel from a Kirby title. Posts so far include Douglas Rushkoff on The Eternals, John Hilgart on Black Magic, Gary Panter on Demon, Dan Nadel on OMAC, and Deb Chachra on Captain America.

I lucked out and got to write about Kamandi.

A lot of the silly comics panels I post are by Jack Kirby and however kooky they are there's always something lurid and arresting and resonant about Kirby's comics. Also! I! Like! Exclamation points!!!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

And Tarkovskij knew what he wanted. He had a scene he had dreamt about doing for a long long time, for ten years, he claimed. It was to be the final scene of The Sacrifice. The main character's house burns down to the ground before his very eyes, he apparently goes insane and is taken away in an ambulance. The entire scene was supposed to be done in one single take while the camera moves along a hundred meter long rail. We had special-effects people brought in from England as there was a requirement in place that the house burn down in eight minutes and ten seconds sharp. Otherwise the film cartridge would run out.

For an entire week this scene was meticulously rehearsed. We had decided to not shoot the scene under sunlit conditions, and so we were forced to get up at two o'clock in the morning, do a few test runs, and then to commence shooting the scene at a carefully selected moment just prior to sunrise.

Approximately half-way through the take, my assistant yells out, "Sven - the camera is losing speed! We got twenty..., now we're at sixteen frames per second! What shall we do?"

Just to be on the safe side, in case problems should arise, I had deployed another camera approximately midway along the rail, so I said, "Swap the cameras!"

Within thirty seconds he had changed the camera and we continued filming. Tarkovskij had not noticed that we had changed camera, nor had the majority of the others. They were all watching the fire, and when it was over and the ambulance had made its exit everybody cheered over the fact that everything had turned out so well.

Then I got to tell about what had happened. Tarkovskij almost cried. The film was immediately developed to see if we in spite of everything could use some of the existing material. But, there was no way. Whatever the case, it was definitely not the sequence Tarkovskij had dreamt about for all these years - and it was even supposed to be the climactic sequence of the movie.

We really didn't have the funds to re-build the house and to do a second take. Long discussions ensued, where even Erland and I were involved in our roles as co-producers. The actors were fortunately still under contract for another while. We received some additional funding through our Japanese co-producer, and in the end we all decided to give it another shot. Nothing is impossible, as Ingmar Bergman was fond of saying. It was his gang behind the camera here. The house was re-built!

This time, however, I requested of Andrej that he agree that we build two sets of rails, and that the shoot should, just to be safe, be be shot simultaneously by the two cameras mounted at slightly different elevations. For an entire day we rehearsed with both cameras to ensure that they both moved in identical manner. We shot the scene one morning when everything seemed just right, but at the same moment Andrej was about to yell "Camera!" the sun appeared.

Tarkovskij shouted, "What shall I do?"

I said, "Look, there's nothing you can do,...! The sun is coming out, the house is already on fire - and we're on our second house!"

Fortunately, it turned out just fantastic. As the smoke billowed forth from the house the sun shone right through it and generated some truly great shading on the ground. It was a lucky strike indeed that the sun appeared - entirely to our advantage, and Tarkovskij was exceedingly pleased when he saw the end result.

Your dad puts the paint on with bucket and trowelsSadly the truckers just want in his bowelsYes they'll tear at his wig while they ream out his bumBut the whore done up dirty is really your mum.

Your dad puts his face on to hang at the parkBut the rouge goes to waste when he's humped in the darkNone see the smears when his eyes tear up suckingBut your mom leaves the lights on for real whorish fucking.

Your dad is a puppet on multiple dicksIf he could count then you bet he'd turn tricksIn a weekend he'll gulp down whole gallons of comeBut the story of whoredom still features your mum.

Your daddy takes peggings while in schoolgirl leggingsFrom ladies who work at SephoraThey paint up his face to his utter disgrace But hey it's your mom that's the whora.

Tomorrow is when Americans that lose fair and square elections accept the will of their fellow citizens and wait for the next election to try and change matters to their liking. Americans don’t take to the streets en masse like the subjects of the latest Thugocracy in Venezuela.

At least most of us don’t.

Here's where we stretch things out before the punchline. You know, I actually and really and for true dreamed last night that I had a guest spot on Bill O'Reilly's show. I was supposed to talk about some piece of scandalous art and Phyllis Schlafly was supposed to be on too. I was there in a hotel room, got a limo to the studio, rode the elevator with all the employees, and somehow then managed to miss my time slot. So I wandered around the office looking for someone to apologize to - don't wanna get off that gravy train - and eventually I found Bill's office. His door was open and I was about to go in and folks were making signs not to. He was asleep in a ridiculous position, curled up in his chair almost sliding off his desk and snoring like a congested elephant. So I went to a lounge to wait for him to wake up and where a bunch of Foxy girls flirted with me or made fun and then when one started inspecting my body I woke up. I am ready to be the new Alan Colmes.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Jesus Christ this is so juvenile but his voice is built to sample. The accent is alien enough that you listen a little harder to figure out what he's saying but it's clear enough that it's hard to mistake what the meaning is.* He hits the stressed syllables pretty hard and the halting preacher style leaves a generous amount of space between words. When you get something to chop up his words for you - because you'd never waste that time on your own - the divisions are pretty clean and you get an instant virtual preacher instrument.

*Okay, this is a moderate lie. "God's Butt Thingie" is actually a kind of lispy "God's Butt Singing" - the latter being pretty funny but less of a silly dance line - so consider yourself hoodwinked by the Power of the Headline.

Thousands gathered outside of the state capitol this afternoon to support Gov. Scott Walker. Teachers and firefighters circled the tea party as it rallied. Gadsden flags clashed with union banners in the cold Wisconsin air. It was a beautiful sight — loud, raucous, animated, and sweaty. Andrew Breitbart, Herman Cain, Brad Thor, Tim Phillips, and Joe the Plumber have addressed the crowd.

It is nice to see Wisconsin's finest leaders addressing the citizenry.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Now I don't much think the implied death-threat of the crosshairs registers on the scale of smart or wise, but you know, saying you’re going to tear up the contracts of thousands of people and back that with military force is what a dictator does. It’s part of the job description.

I love listening to Dr. J. Vernon McGee. He's got an accent and delivery that's part yokel, part lawyer, part cranky elder, part brain-damage victim and all preacher. He's dead now, so though you can hear him on Christian radio all over the place you don't have to worry any more that he's in pursuit of an active mission to turn people into kooks. He is worm food.

The idea of his radio shows was just a close-read of the Bible, verse by verse, attempting to explain what was going on with hillbilly common sense and an occasional Greek or Hebrew word - no KJV purist he - to appeal to the inferiority complex of the frightened fuck-ups looking for a guide to salvation.

His plowing through the Book of Revelations is fun because Revelations makes no sense at all: it's pretty much just babbling and as I say I like his voice. I haven't listened to his take on the Song of Solomon: saving it as a treat.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

In a world filled with states, officeholders and officials should view themselves as having political responsibility as analyzed by Weber, which is much like [David] Miller’s remedial responsibility. They wield power that is not morally legitimated by its origins; the power exists because of morally neutral historical and social accidents. What remains is moral responsibility for what is done with the power.

State officials then confront a world in which their authority gives them unusual power over outcomes. In a world full of drowning children, they are unusually likely to have access to life preservers.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

"Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," he said. "They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."

Gee, I'll bet all the dead people are grateful for his courage. He probably has flowers thrown at him when he's out on the streets of Baghdad, right?

In a series of meetings with the Guardian in Germany where he has been granted asylum, he said he had told a German official, who he identified as Dr Paul, about mobile bioweapons trucks throughout 2000.

Monday, February 14, 2011

A small piece of evidence to counter my pessimism about Egypt came right after Mubarak’s departure, when ordinary Egyptians organized themselves to clean up the mess in Tahrir Square[.]

That was indeed a nice picture of folks coming together to make things better.

This all may sound charming but unimportant, but it’s not. Anyone who’s been to the third world has seen trash strewn everywhere. This isn’t because less-developed countries produce more trash; in fact, they produce less. And it’s also not just because of lack of money for a proper waste-disposal infrastructure. Rather, it’s the product of a lack of civic consciousness and responsibility, without which ordered liberty is impossible.

...

Yes, the good news of the day is that Cairenes are potential non-savages.

Sometimes the natives of these third-world backwaters harness their primitive beats in protest of the ruin of their surroundings:

Saturday, February 12, 2011

I'm at a fake-marriage market, where Chinese lesbians and gay men meet to find a potential husband or wife. In China, the pressure to form a heterosexual marriage is so acute that 80 percent of China's gay population marries straight people, according to sexologist Li Yinhe, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. To avoid such unions, six months ago, Shanghai's biggest gay Web site, inlemon.cn, started to hold marriage markets once a month.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

The "war on terror" prison at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is "one of the finest prison systems in the world," former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

Perhaps a certain president could show this somehow-not-yet-beaten-to-death-in-prison asshole what an asshole he really is, and perhaps my ass poops ice-cream.

Reacting to David Cameron’s Luton Munich speech, one prominent Canadian community leader said Cameron was “spot on” when he insisted British multiculturalism has failed, adding that Canada’s multi-culti experiment was no better off.

“The Canadian multicultural model has failed, as the British model has,” the leader said. “When first generation (Muslims) are more loyal to Canada than the second generation, then we have sufficient evidence to say that multiculturalism has failed.”

Foster is one of the smarter Cornerites - which elevates him to stupidity I suppose - so he saves the punchline until the end:

So who’s the leader? Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

The link goes to the Toronto Sun, a paper nobody needs to read ever, and the few other Canadian papers covering it seem to mostly be those interested in arguments against multiculturalism. Should you choose to follow the link, you'll find that the arguments against multiculturalism are that Mulsims aren't loyal to Canada, and also that 18 guys got arrested for concocting a plot to blow stuff up.

To the first of these two points I'd answer that if the measure of failure is loyalty to Canada then we gotta stop sucking Neil Young's cock. Really, one of the strengths of Canada, at least in the west where I grew up, is a notable lack of patriotism, notwithstanding these shitty commercials for shitty beer. I just do not care if your ambition is to move to Pakistan, though I hope it works out. I suppose the area on which Canadians can agree is that America sucks and Americans are stupid, although we all wanna go live in the warm parts of America forever and have sex with Americans and never come home ever. Unless we get cancer or something.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Via Brendan an article about Scientology. There are incidents detailed that are new to me, but most of the material on the CoS itself is typical stuff from an investigative article on Scientology: abuse, money, egomania, and a wall of silence around what the church actually does and believes. The most interesting thing about the article to me is that many of the defectors are believers in the good that Scientology can do, they just don't like how the hierarchy works. A standard religious conundrum I guess. I wound up having a little pity for Tommy Davis, who comes across there and elsewhere and elsewhere and elsewhere and elswhere as a tightly-wound shitbag and obvious liar, yet a pawn of an organization that can't let go of any power it conceives it has. I kind of hope he's able to wear an old shirt with paint on it and some cutoffs down to the 7-11 to get a Slurpee once in a while.

On to juicy celebrity news!

Brousseau also says that he helped customize a Ford Excursion S.U.V. that Cruise owned, installing features such as handmade eucalyptus panelling. The customization job was presented to Tom Cruise as a gift from David Miscavige, he said. “I was getting paid fifty dollars a week,” he recalls. “And I’m supposed to be working for the betterment of mankind.” Several years ago, Brousseau says, he worked on the renovation of an airport hangar that Cruise maintains in Burbank. Sea Org members installed faux scaffolding, giant banners bearing the emblems of aircraft manufacturers, and a luxurious office that was fabricated at church facilities, then reassembled inside the hangar. Brousseau showed me dozens of photographs documenting his work for Cruise.

Both Cruise’s attorney and the church deny Brousseau’s account. Cruise’s attorney says that “the Church of Scientology has never expended any funds to the personal benefit of Mr. Cruise or provided him with free services.” Tommy Davis says that these projects were done by contractors, and that Brousseau acted merely as an adviser. He also says, “None of the Church staff involved were coerced in any way to assist Mr. Cruise. Church staff, and indeed Church members, hold Mr. Cruise in very high regard and are honored to assist him. Whatever small economic benefit Mr. Cruise may have received from the assistance of Church staff pales in comparison to the benefits the Church has received from Mr. Cruise’s many years of volunteer efforts for the Church.” Yet this assistance may have involved many hours of unpaid labor on the part of Sea Org members.

See Richard Thompson move from easygoing jokester to heartbreaker in mere moments. Surely the mark of a psychopath. Also watch him tune up mid-solo. This is about as sappy a melody and sentiment as I can handle in a song...at least from people who are not Gods Walking The Earth, which Richard Thompson obviously is. Seek out a studio version; a smidge of gurl harmony really adds to the song cuz you get TWO pathetic losers instead of one.

Words:

Oh play me a blue song and fade down the lightI'm sad as a proud man can be sad tonightJust let me dream on, oh just let me swayWhile the sweet violins and the saxophones playAnd Miss, you don't know me, but can't we pretendThat we care for each other, till the band reach the end

One step for aching, and two steps for breakingWaltzing's for dreamers and losers in loveOne step for sighing and two steps for cryingWaltzing's for dreamers and losers in love

Now they say love's for gamblers, oh the pendulum swingsI bet hard on love and I lost everythingSo don't send me home now, put a shot in my armAnd we'll drink out old memories and we'll drink in the dawnAnd Mr Bandleader won't you play one more timeFor I've good folding money in this pocket of mine

Oh, one step for aching, two steps for breakingWaltzing's for dreamers and losers in loveOne step for sighing, and two steps for cryingWaltzing's for dreamers and losers in love

Oh Miss, you don't know me, but can't we pretendThat we care for each other, till the band reach the end

Oh, one step for aching, two steps for breakingWaltzing's for dreamers and losers in loveOne step for sighing, two steps for cryingWaltzing's for dreamers and losers in loveWaltzing's for dreamers and losers in love

Sunday, February 6, 2011

The wiki I was bugging people about here and here was decided by conference call and MediaWiki won. I preferred Tiki just because I thought the ability to install and administrate was better for normal humans, but the guys who are going to have the say over administration without actually administrating seem to think they'll be able to get what they want if they pay other people to do that. MediaWiki is recognizable, and can do WYSIWYG editing along with many other good things if you customize. If the higher-ups can hire someone to make MediaWiki do all the stuff they want done it'll be awesome. The problem for the developer is gonna be getting a meaningful articulation of what the project is supposed to achieve, as I don't think the decision makers have an understanding of what they'll get. I know what I want and a cuddlier-than-Wikipedia MediaWiki installation is good for me, my colleagues in my office and across the country, but I'm not sure the people who are signing off on it are gonna realize their dream for it if they have a hard time spelling out their desires in words.

An okay result for me if it actually goes live and doesn't get bogged down in meeting after meeting resulting in tweak after tweak. As for the result for them, we hope for a patient developer who is okay with computer baby-talk and handholding.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

I’ve probably never done this before, but I’m going to leap to the defense of Jimmy Carter. This legal action against him is the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit. If plaintiffs had to pay costs when they lost lawsuits, we wouldn’t see nonsense like this.

By the way, Carter hasn’t been “officially charged with fraud.” He has merely been accused of it. Big difference.

Who's he talking to? Oh right, the bit's titled "re: President Carter’s ‘Fraud’" so there must be an item further down. And there is:

A provocative case — Unterberg et al. v. Jimmy Carter et al. — is under way against former president Carter for his analysis (if that is the right word) of the Israel-Palestine crisis, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. The Washington Post reports that five dissatisfied customers, to put it mildly, have filed a class-action lawsuit in Manhattan federal court against Carter and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, alleging that the 2006 book ought to have been classified as a work of fiction.

Provocative! Thanks to Miller the piece has been updated:

Correction: This post originally carried the title “President Carter Officially Charged with Fraud.” The mistake has since been changed. The fault is my own.